Queen of Nothing
by Singofsolace
Summary: Regina has lost much, but there is still someone she needs to protect. The Queen of Nothing loses everything, but finds a way to pick up the pieces. Eventual love interest. Follows Regina's story from 2x21 onward.
1. Time and Torture

A/N: Regina is such a fascinating, multi-layered person, so I wanted to try my hand at a little character piece. I don't own Once Upon a Time. My words are all I have!

* * *

She was going to kill Greg Mendell.

Upon reflection, Regina was not really in the position to be devising elaborate means of killing the boy (he would always be a boy in her mind, no matter how many years had passed) but being strapped upon a cold metal table and forced to endure countless rounds of high-voltage electricity had a way of skewing her priorities. Her physical and mental health was not so concerning as the immense pleasure she would get from murdering the man whose retched, twisted face kept invading her spotty vision.

_"Where is my father?"_

Where indeed?

Regina felt the electricity slice its way through her body, shocking her into a hazy No-Man's-Land between excruciating pain and oblivion. Her head is spinning; she cannot keep her eyes from darting around the room, trying to remember when and where and what exactly was happening to her. She knew why—had always known why, no matter the date and time and place—but time eluded her in the same way it had all of her life.

There is a harsh coldness in her chest, while her skin crawls and her body shakes. She pictures thousands of bolts of lightning erupting out of her fingertips. She can hear someone scream, distantly, and entertains the idea that she is not alone in her suffering, but then she realizes that her mouth is open and her throat is on fire.

Regina recalls the last time she had screamed in this way—with a detachment that left her floating above the scene, almost there, almost not—and for an instant, she is young and broken and lost. Time likes to turn and make a fool of her when it grows tired of bending to her will, and torture has a way of reminding Regina just how little things have changed.

_"Where is my father?"_

Words are starting to lose meaning to her; she cannot separate them from the ringing in her ears. She wonders if this is what people hear before they die, or if the ringing will give way to deafness before she reaches that point. She would welcome the silence, if that were the case. Greg Mendell's voice is a knife carving its way through her subconscious.

_"Where. Is. My. Father?"_

Fathers were funny things, weren't they? Her father, certainly, was an odd duck. He always tried to protect her, but he could not save her from herself. Fathers never seemed to know when to give up. And, in the end, they were powerless to help their children…

Especially when they were dead.

She vaguely entertains the idea of telling him. Owen—Greg—whoever he was, would certainly kill her then. He would have his revenge, and this would all be done. She could see Daniel again. Or at least, she would like to think she could…

She tries to picture death but is only met with unclear images of dust and decay. She sees her mother crushing Daniel's heart, and knows that the act of dying is not a peaceful thing. Maybe, in another life, Regina could have hoped for peace, but after all the lives she has taken, she knows she deserves a fate worse than death.

But if she were to leave this life behind, for what level of hell should she prepare?

Electricity ripped through her veins, effectively stopping any and all thought. Again and again, she could feel it slowly taking her away. Her awareness was leaving her. The pauses between rounds were becoming shorter and shorter until Regina saw white.

Snow. It was snowing.

Or was it ash? Ash, raining from the whiteness of the sky?

She had never been very good at separating what was real and what was not. Truth was her fickle friend at best. She found at an early age that lying was one of her greatest talents, and such a skill was useful only so far as it was convincing. She could create a whole world of illusions. She could create it so well, in fact, that she could forget that it was a lie.

_(She wants to believe it, so she does.) _

Dying felt like fire and ice. Fire and ice, engulfing her body in a magnificent tomb that was befitting a queen.

Yet, Regina could sense the wrongness of it all. This was not how the story was supposed to end, was it? The Evil Queen should not be dying on a metal table, with the smell of sardines and low tide strong enough to make her gag.

Where was the battle? Where was the arrow in her chest, the knife in her heart? Where was the army of people she had wronged, shouting for her execution?

She felt her death should have at least achieved something—should have provided comfort or a sense of justice or _something,_ but this, this was different...

There was another thought drifting at the edge of her awareness, in the snowstorm of her mind, but she could not manage to concentrate enough to bring it into focus. Every time she thought that she had reeled it in, that she could finally see it, the electricity made quick work of severing the line.

"_You feel that? That's the end of you!"_

There was something missing. Something she had left undone. She knew it, knew it like she knew that she was on her way to hell. There was someone for whom she needed to fight. There was someone she needed to protect.

A face blossomed from the last memories slipping from her mind.

_Henry._ There it was. She needed to see him. She needed to tell him she loved him. She could not die without saying goodbye.

There was pain, but it was moving swiftly into numbness.

"_Now you're never gonna hurt anyone ever again."_

And then there was nothing.


	2. The Awakening

A/N: I decided to make this a multi-chapter story following Regina from episode 2x21, _Second Star to the Right_, onward. There may be points at which I deviate from the show, but for the most part, it will be the canon events as seen from Regina's eyes. Originally titled "Time and Torture," then changed to "From Time to Time," but now I am sticking with this title for good. Sorry for any confusion it caused. Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Regina was familiar with this misty land of in-between. As a child she had wished to stay there, suspended between dreams and reality. There was peacefulness in this realm that she had never had in her waking life. She knew this place like she knew the color of Daniel's eyes. She knew it like the feel of a still-beating heart resting in the palm of her hand. She knew it, and she knew that eventually she would have to leave. But not yet.

There was light. There was light and there was warmth, but there was also absence. There was a void.

Was this death? This not-unpleasant netherworld where she could finally rest?

No. Death should be final, and even now she could feel the tug, the incessant pull of consciousness to bring her back.

She was waking up.

* * *

Returning hurt. It was pain like she had never felt before. Every bone in her body felt broken, every nerve ending tingled like ten thousand pins and needles were pressing into her skin. There was fire beneath her skull; her head felt as though it had been crushed beneath a giant's foot and then burned in a pit of flames. Her mind was a messy mass of incoherent thoughts and jumbled signals.

_Breathe._ That's what she needed to do. Just breathe.

Regina tried to connect the thought with the action and instantly regretted it. Knives danced through her lungs. Her chest heaved, and she thought for a moment that she was suffocating. The excruciating pain was only useful in confirming one heretofore-uncertain thing: she wasn't dead.

_Fantastic. _

There was something on her forehead. She could feel the pressure of something soft, something warm—an altogether too gentle touch. Her first instinct was to swat whatever it was away, but somewhere in the synapses of her brain there was a disconnection. She could not lift her hand if she tried.

Concentrating with all the power she had left, Regina attempted to open her eyes. It was a slow process—one that should not have taken as long as it did—but something told her that that was the least of her problems at the moment.

At first, there was nothing. Her vision was clouded over, and she could not persuade the fog to clear. Then, slowly, she could see a wrist. A hand pressing something to her head.

She knew who it was, but was not any better off for knowing. An unwanted memory of a time when this woman—this girl she had hunted for so long—was in the same caretaking position pushed itself into her mind. Regina was not fond of that particular memory, but even so, she remembered everything as clearly as if it were happening just now. She could close her eyes and feel the ground of the forest, see a young woman with long, dark hair leaning over her with caring eyes, pressing a cloth into her sweat-speckled, feverish brow. She could remember, but she did not want to.

Pushing the memory aside, Regina searched for her voice. It came out weaker than she would have liked—her voice was hoarse from screaming—but she could still feel the way her words lacked the sort of gratitude that should have been present in a situation such as this.

"You? You saved me?" Regina does not have to ask, but she does anyway. She is surprised, but only slightly. It would be just like Snow White to save the woman who had caused all of her suffering. Even in Storybrooke, some things never changed.

"Yes." Snow was looking at her in a way she didn't like. A way that told Regina she must look as terrible as she felt.

"You really think we'd let you die?" Charming's voice is unwelcome. It grates on her already sensitive nerves.

Regina looks away, and takes a breath. There were still knives skipping down her esophagus and scraping at her lungs. It would be so much easier to hate them if she didn't know that deep down, she didn't—couldn't—hate them the way she always pretended that she had. All the years she spent placing blame and seeking revenge felt like a lifetime ago. She was tired of this fight. Besides, they were too noble to put up a proper challenge.

It was sickening, really.

"…despite our differences, we're family." Charming was still talking, but she wasn't listening. There were more pressing matters than a sickly family tree.

"Where are they? Where are Greg and Tamara?" She says the names with contempt, but her voice is still scratchy and too weak to carry much of a threat.

"They got away."

No. That could not be. She had come too far and suffered too much to have it end like this. The words move past her lips before she can stop them, "So they still have it."

"Still have what?"

She is too tired to explain. Her head is pounding, and the beats of her heart are coming at odd times. She has never had an arrhythmia before, but it feels as though a bird is in her chest, flying against its cage, ramming itself into the bars again and again. Her heart is beating itself into a frenzy, and for a moment, Regina entertains the idea of ripping it out of her chest and crushing it herself...

"Regina?"

She does not answer. There can be no coming back from this.

"Regina, _what _do they have?"

Snow's voice is frantic, and for a moment, Regina's mind goes blank. She closes her eyes, but then there are rough hands on her shoulders and she is being shaken.

"Damn it, Regina! Tell us what you know!" It's Charming. She knows it's Charming even as her awareness drifts away. Her shoulders hurt where his fingernails are digging into them, but even so, she has to fight to stay awake.

"David, stop! That's not helping!" Snow moves to pull David away from Regina, her eyes wide when she sees that they are losing the older woman.

Fighting through the fog, Regina finds the thread of thought for which she had been searching. "They have the trigger," she manages to say, and although she does not have the strength to spare to harden her tone, she does anyway.

"A trigger?"

She knows that this conversation could end very badly, but she cannot summon up the ability to care.

"That will destroy Storybrooke."

Regina vaguely wonders if she should feel more affection for the town that had been her home for nearly thirty years, but upon reflection, she could think of nothing good about it besides her son. Her son had been her home for the last eleven years, not some imaginary town in Nowhere, Maine.

At these words, Snow looks like she has lost a lot of the misplaced faith she had had in her former stepmother. _Good_, Regina thinks.

"Why exactly were you carrying it around?" Snow is wary, but Charming knows the nature of the beast. Dragon slayer, indeed.

"She was going to destroy us, Mary Margaret."

Regina has neither the patience nor the clarity of mind to fight this fight right now. She opts for the truth, because really, what else was there to say? "I was going to use the beans to take Henry back to the Enchanted forest."

Snow's reaction was one of sadness and disappointment. Her eyes had lost any and all tenderness they had held earlier.

"And in the process kill all of us." She knew better than anyone what her stepmother was capable of, but this still came as a bit of a shock.

There was no time for this. Regina could feel the anger boiling in her stomach, the pain being replaced by a sense of purpose.

"You want to discuss justification? You were going to abandon me. Or shall we discuss a more pressing issue—which is that _I no longer control the trigger_."

Those words seem to make it through to them, and Regina rests her head back against the pillow. For a second she struggles to ignore the searing pain that shoots down her spine from the base of her neck, but eventually she lets go. Lets the pain be felt.

For this moment, she would rest. She would take this moment to collect herself enough to prepare for the battle that was to come. She was not going to die at the hands of a couple of magic-hating humans who fancied themselves heroes.

Regina had made her decision. She was going to save Storybrooke…or she was going to die in the attempt. She was not afraid to die. She was not afraid, because this time, she had something worth dying for.


End file.
